Vandal Records Guest Mix

French drum & bass label Vandal Records are celebrating ten years of success by releasing the aptly titled Decade album. Vandal’s two head honchos, SKS & Redeyes, tell us all about it and reminisce about their incredible journey…

First of all, give us a little background behind Vandal Records…
SKS: Vandal Records was created by me and owned by a hard tekno label called Freestylisten in 2004. After a few vinyl releases I eventually managed all aspects of the label.

Why did you start the label?
SKS: I was part of a rave crew named The Kimyst who played hip hop, house, d&b and hard tekno. I was friends with people from Freestylisten and they wanted a d&b division so they asked me to manage it. Toulouse is a special place in France for d&b as well, so I first signed people from here and then grew the label with more international artists that I liked.

How do you feel Vandal records has progressed over the last 10 years?
SKS: We’ve delivered a solid vinyl release each year from 2004 to 2013 and since then Redeyes came to help develop the label. Now Vandal Records and Vandal Ltd release music every three or four weeks. The label started with friends and now we’ve got big names on it. It took a lot of time but since last year we’re doing the right things to be where we want to be.

What for you are the labels major accomplishments?
SKS: The S.P.Y. release, which was the first one featuring an A-list producer on the label, also the NickBee release and Redeyes LP.

Redeyes: Hyroglifics, because we signed him just before he went exclusive to Critical. Oliver Yorke, his EP is gonna drop early next year and it’s amazing. We’re doing our first video for a tune from this EP also. Fans of Exit or Metalheadz, keep an eye on this release.

What advice would you give to anybody looking to start their own label?
Put your heart into it, release music that you like and promote it as well as you can.

Has Decade been in the pipeline for a while or was it a more recent project?
With the direction that the label has been going since last year, it was clear that we needed to make a big thing to celebrate 10 years of love for this music.

Personally, Ivory, Sidecar and Redline are my favourite songs on the album, what are yours and why?
SKS: Hard to pick a favourite but I really like Lost, Demon Core, Sidecar and Mongoose.

Redeyes: Taelimb’s tune is crazy, I signed it first for an “All Cities” [side project with Vandal Ltd]but it’s so big that it deserved to be on that LP. Generic is sick too, really got that old Hardware vibe that we love so much, plus he’s also doing artworks for the label.

Will the release be purely digital or can the junkies expect a vinyl release?
This one will be digital but we hope that the vinyl market and also our sales will grow to offer a physical release.

Will their be a launch party?
We did a Vandal Records party to celebrate 10 years of D&B already with S.P.Y., L 33 and Signs in September at Le Bikini Toulouse.

What can we expect in the future for Vandal Records in terms of releases, new signings, events etc?
We’re gonna develop Vandal Records Events in the future for sure. In the pipeline we’ve got an EP from a newcomer Oliver Yorke and some future Redeyes material on Vandal Limited. Also an EP with Kyrist, Tephra & Arkoze, Kolektiv, Roy Green & Protone as well as a single from our good friends Signs who are gonna make some big waves in 2015!